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Watching bad road situations develop...


Mac
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On the way home this evening around the North Circular - think 3 lane 50Mph limit urban road, fairly busy so average speeds maybe 30-50 ish. Anyway, a biker was roughly around me - so +/- 300m or so. 

 

As an ex-biker (apart from a recent 800Km stint in Aus I've not ridden in maybe 10+ years) you can kind of spot the new riders - and this guy stuck out badly. Terrible road positioning, filtering in ways that made me wince etc. Funny how you watch stuff and just think oh here we go.

 

He wasn't being aggressive or anything, just poor. Jerky, un-smooth, and like I say, terrible road positioning.

 

We get up to a faster bit of road - averages maybe 40-60 and something else caught my eye. A crappy, not look after Proton or something similar. I tend to have in my head that people that drive poorly maintained cars often don't really care about driving and can often be less than competent. 

 

So....biker - who's now a 100m or so behind me having tried undertaking lots of other cars etc. each time seemingly putting himself in a worse position - undertakes me and proceeds to sit in the off-side quarter of this crappy green Proton.

 

Now, before someone jumps in and ask whether I was goading him on or getting involved - I absolutely wasn't. I had H in the car, traffic was quite heavy, and we weren't in a particular hurry. 

 

So here we are - I'd decided in my head that the biker was new and not very experienced (even though he was on a GSXR750..which is very capable bike I think), and I'm naturally wary of badly maintained cars that sit in the middle lane oblivious to what's going on around them....

 

Why the biker was sat at about a 60% angle behind the driver is beyond me - there was no traffic in front of him?

 

Anyway, I'm sure you can imagine what's coming? 

 

Guy in the Proton just pulls in to lane 3 - with no indication - for no apparent reason that I could spot? There's now nothing in Lanes 1 & 2, with me in Lane 3 as I was going to overtake said Proton before biker whipping through and my spider sense going bonkers.

 

Bike locks up, front of bike plummets as he's obviously slammed on the front brake too....and how he managed to stay on and not all over the central reservation is beyond me.

 

He recouped his nerves, and slowed down in to the middle lane. Again, you can just tell from the body language he was inexperienced, and he'd just massively shat in his Power Ranger suit. 

 

It's odd isn't it how sometimes you just know a situation is developing, and that you should GTF away from it?

 

Another incident not to far from there happened to me years and years ago. Bottom of the M11 goes from NSL 3 lane to 2 lane 50 with a speed camera not long after the change.

 

Driving home that way - light traffic - and I noticed there was a car parked on the hard shoulder obviously broken down...but parked a bit oddly, at an angle. I assumed it had broken down quickly...but I dunno, it just made me more alert for some reason I've still no clue about.

 

I slowed down and as I was approaching the car on the shoulder, the rear passenger door opened and a youngster jumped out - must have been maybe 4/5? Anyway, panic set in ....and he bolted across the motorway toward the central reservation ! I stopped pretty sharpish, and I simple can't imagine how close I'd come to hitting him. I also remember my instinct while braking was to pull into lane 2 (think braking in right of lane 1, into lane 2) but obviously that didn't work as the kid ran across lane 2...shortly with his dad in pursuit.

 

How there wasn't a terrible accident that day I don't know - that's usually an incredibly busy stretch of road, and while I can't remember the time of day etc. or whether it was the weekend they were incredibly lucky they were not immediately mowed down by a lorry.

 

 

Conversely of course I know people who just seem to have no road awareness in them at all - they think if they're driving in accordance with the signs etc. than that's just 'good enough'. I find people like that terrifying to be in a car with!

 

Anyway, I'm waffling, be interested to hear about other people's experiences are - situations developing?

Edited by Mac
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Er, above reads like I'm saying I've great road awareness - that's not really what I mean. You can't really measure your own road awareness can you? I could have been oblivious to thousands of things over the years instead.

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I see it all the time, sometimes its people you see in your mirror being really aggressive and next thing you know you have been undertaken and they are just driving like they are on fire. 

 

The defensive driving I've done has helped me a lot and they always tell you that you can see / feel when something isn't right and to back away and keep enough space to be able to take avoiding action. I don't like it when you get things like 3 cars all very close together, you could be seconds from them taking you out just because they don't know how to drive. 

 

I tend to drive less at the moment with my current role but that unfortunately doesn't mean the incidents of silliness is dropping. 

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It's what makes experienced drivers safer than newbies. Something about the pattern of movements ahead of you triggers a warning bell somewhere and you back off. Often, you can't say what it was that spooked you until afterwards.

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It's hard to put your finger on why some people are so poor on the road, whilst others seemingly never have an incident.

 

You hear of people who have had a handful of what were officially 'non fault' accidents - but I do wonder what they're doing to attract so many incidents!

 

I know a number of us on Tyresmoke are in the 'road warrior' group - we do lots of miles a year on business... and we can go hundreds of thousands of miles without incident. I've had a couple of minor issues - the dented door in the Berlin hotel car park and I heavily curbed a wheel when I got a stone-chip a month or so back (it nigh on punctured the screen and I had a bit of a moment when it hit - sounded like someone had fired a shot at me).

 

Yet I know of someone who managed to suffer 3 non-fault accidents in as many years! - all of which required fairly major bodywork.

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Er, above reads like I'm saying I've great road awareness - that's not really what I mean. You can't really measure your own road awareness can you? I could have been oblivious to thousands of things over the years instead.

 

Actually I think you can in a way, being a high mileage driver tends to give you a second sense kind of thing, as you say, you can see situations develop and you just think, I need to move.

 

It makes it sound like I'm trying to say I'm some kind of amazing driver, but I'm not, I do stupid things occasionally, I make mistakes, I do things I shouldn't, but, I do think high mileage drivers tend to see things others don't, and I don't think it's something you can learn either.

 

I've had it a couple of times being a passenger in other peoples cars, I might make a quiet but firm remark to the driver to 'just hang back a bit for me will you' or 'wait, don't go yet' or 'move over there', that kind of thing, and something always happens, a car will appear out of nowhere and the driver will ask how I knew that was going to happen, the answer is always the same - I don't know.

 

This one is hard to believe I know, but I promise it's absolutely true, and I still don't know how I knew, but on the famous country lanes I've mentioned on here several times before, proper single track lanes with occasional passing places, blind corners etc, I was driving along last Friday with two of the children I'm contracted to take to/from school, I rounded a bend and saw a passing spot, and I just thought, I better pull in there, no reason, couldn't see anything coming but something told me to pull in.

 

Lad sat next to me looked at me and just as the words were about to come out of his mouth, a black MP4-12C came around the corner at about 50 mph, would have been a head on, I would only have been doing around 15-20 mph, and if we'd both braked I reckon it would still have been a 40 - 50mph impact.

 

Now I've no idea why I pulled in, I can only assume that there must have been some signs that didn't register consciously, perhaps movement of hedges, or something, there has to have been something as I'm definitely not psychic, but there is no way I could have seen it.

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I keep meaning to buy one, but just haven't got around to it, I've yet to find one that really fulfills my needs either, a couple have come close, and I'll probably just end up buying one.

 

I'd bet it wouldn't be long until I caught someone doing something stupid!

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There are some obvious things I like to think I can foresee, like the roundabout cutters or the lane drifters and I could only attribute it to experience and looking out for the drivers that just don't seem very positive (if that makes sense). That said, I did have an accident in Jan so maybe I need recalibration!

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I sometimes sit in the passenger seat with my wife driving and wonder how she has never crashed. She does a good job of convincing me she looks no further than 20m ahead and 1m left/right. And that's after 25 years of driving. Absolutely blind to what goes on around her.

Edited by Milo
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My ex used to think rat-running was the answer to every journey. Never used a main road if she could use 9 smaller ones instead. I swear it just made the journeys four times longer and eleventh-twelve times longer. What's that about?

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MrsMe is a very good driver. However, her sister has got to be one of the worst in the UK.

She's never had an accident...but she causes them by the truckload. :roflmao:

I think I'm a decent driver and I know how to handle a RWD car. I don't think I'm anything special beyond that though. Awareness is 90% of the battle of the UK roads today. If I recounted half my stories from just the last year I'd run out of iPad battery.

The middle lane hoggers are still the ones that get me. You know they're unaware of their surrounding just virtue of them being there. How else would you stay there when there is nothing anywhere near you and a mile of clear carriageway ahead?

It's an interesting thing to observe though, driver behaviour,

I think I can spot when I see a country bumpkin in a City and vice versa. The country bumpkin is always the terrified and hesitant one straddling lanes. The City driver in the countryside is the one who blasts off into the distance around Northumberland and you then pass him looking back at the hole he's just created in the hedge as he pulls himself up the embankment,

I still think we should have 5 year re-testing on awareness only.

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Interesting and honest question for patently, as I think he's our only proper racing driver.

 

Do you find a conflict between how you drive on road and track, purely in terms of hazard perception and avoidance?

 

It's what makes experienced drivers safer than newbies. Something about the pattern of movements ahead of you triggers a warning bell somewhere and you back off. Often, you can't say what it was that spooked you until afterwards.

 

The bit in bold is probably a familiar description to most of us, especially those who've been driving 20 plus years and or do high mileage.  But ... if you follow the same approach to the same extent on track you're going to lose places. Is it simply a higher risk threshhold or a different approach altogether?

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Good Lord yes, it's a totally different approach.

On the road, when you see something developing, you back off (as I said).

In a race (note: not "on track", I'll back off on a track day, in testing, or in quali), if you see that something is developing then you try to predict where he's going to go and drive to avoid it. The right foot stays very firmly down, you just adjust your line to drive round it.

I wouldn't say the threshold goes up, though. Quite the opposite, you're more alert to stuff and looking for it more closely. That may be because everything is happening more quickly, there might be only seconds between the symptom and the sideways car in front of you blocking your way.

Edited by patently
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Yesterday evening, on the M25, where I think I spent most of the day...

 

Heading towards Jn21 where the have closed the exit onto the M1 for some reason.  Now, that is one of those exits where lane 1 peels off, so to close it they have had to cone off lane 1 and push everyone into lane 2.  Fortunately, the road was quite quiet so after seeing the matrix signs saying Jn21 was shut, then the matrix signs saying lane 1 was going to close, then the overhead gantries asking you to move out of lane 1, then spotting the mass of reflective-coated cones in the distance, in lane 1 going diagonally across to push you into lane 2, I settled into lane 2.  So I'm in lane 2 with about 300 yards of lane 1 remaining to my left.  

 

Quick mirror check and the pattern looks wrong.  You know how on the motorway, you can get more from looking at the pattern of the flow around you than (necessarily) by focusing on individual vehicles?  Well. my first impression was that the flow was wrong, more on the left than on the right.  Closer inspection tells me there is a Zafira in lane 1 going hell for leather.  Usually you expect to see the faster stuff on the right, not the left.  Ah well, never mind, he'll pull out behind me and overtake.  

 

Glimpse again, he hasn't pulled out yet. 200 yards of lane 1 left.  He's leaving it late.  Alarm bells start ringing quietly.

 

Glimpse again, he's still not pulled out.  100 yards of lane 1 left.  Alarm bells on loud.  Off the accelerator, ready to react.

 

Glimpse again, very soon after.  Fecker is going to overtake me on the inside in a lane that has circa 50 yards left.  Hit the brakes, hard.  I hadn't managed to squeal the tyres in the Land Rover until then.  I don't really want to again.  Idiot squeezes past on my left and moves out in front of me with what would have been feet to spare, but in fact had about 30 yards as the Land Rover brakes were better than I expected.  

 

He then slowed down, flashed his hazard lights as if to say sorry, and looked very sheepish as we went past him.  I'm guessing he just wasn't looking - fiddling with the radio maybe? But his attention must have been completely off the road for something like a mile or so, at about 90mph while heading for a very obvious mass of cones and going past several warning signs...

 

I'm just glad it happened where it did - had there not been a lane change then he would have gone straight into the back of me.

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I had a good vision of that in my mind.  I know exactly where you mean too because it the exit I always take, naturally.

 

I do hope they're changing it.  It is a terrible exit with bad signage that, unless you're used to it, catches you out.  I see people getting it wrong all the time.  They either pull off too soon, or they fly across into it and remove the noses of 3 cars in the process.

 

The same applies for the Stansted junction and the 'sweeping' lane that is just all wrong from a road markings perspective.  Whoever comes up with the signage and road markings must work in completely different departments.  I find London is particularly bad for it, but not quite as bad as Birmingham where it is a simple case of "ignore the arrows, just guess".

 

The incident you describe sounds the opposite of what you see in the right hand lane so often where there are road works.

 

You see the 1 mile marker.

 

You see the 800 yards marker.

 

Then 400.  Then 200.

 

But there's always a **** who is either blind or stupid and didn't see or ignored them. 

 

I hate those feckers, and their VW Passat*.  Because it is always VW Passat* driver. 

 

<*possible generalisation but I don't care>

Edited by NewNiceMrMe
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I've no idea but they're certainly not a car owned by people who notice countdown signs to coned off areas.

 

I was on the A1(M) a month or more ago when a Passat came flying down the outside lane with about 50-60 yards to go before the cones started their diagonal line on the outside lane.

 

I wasn't going to let him in because I felt like that and had seen him coming for a long distance.  The car in front wasn't either, and nor was the 50 million ton HGV that was his last hope. :roflmao:

 

So he just had to brake and stop.  Then he pulled in behind me and flashed his headlights.  I gave him the finger and off we went.  I half expected him to overtake me when clear of the roadworks and try to give me abuse, but he just hung back.  I'd guess he was in his 60's, with his blue rinse wife or mother sat alongside him.

Edited by NewNiceMrMe
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Just been to visit an old colleague for a brew. He has a Passat. And he's a truly TERRIBLE driver. That's conclusive enough for me.

 

Patently - if I'd been in your position I would have been seriously tempted to make absolutely sure he was left with the options of hitting me or the cones.

 

I would have been seriously tempted to do that. Although I expect at the last minute I'd have left him just enough room and then tried to melt his rear number plate with my main beam from a foot. :P

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That did occur to me. However, there are two ways that could pan out.

First, he goes into the passenger side, next to where Master P was sitting. Not good. In the process, he writes off the car that need to tow the 7 to Silverstone next weekend. Not good either.

Alternatively, he goes into the cones and loses control, probably spinning off in one of two directions. If to the left, he throws a cone at me and scratches my paintwork. Not good, unless compared to the alternatives. If to the right, see above.

So judicious braking followed by numberplate-melting was the preferred option :coffee:

Seriously, though, my reaction was about keeping *control* of the situation. I decided where he went, I made sure he went there, and that it was a place that left me unharmed. Any other option put the "do I crash/don't I crash" decision in his hands, not mine, which is not where I like it.

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You're absolutely right on all counts, of course - especially with Master P in the car.

 

Just one of those situations where ten years ago I'd have seriously considered squeezing them out - or leaving barely enough room and then going all road ragey on their ass.

 

These days, whatever I might be thinking, I'll hang back, let them go and be happy that they're in front of me where I can see and react to whatever ****witted thing it is they do next.

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